According to The Asahi Shimbun, cancer patients in a palliative care unit at a hospital here are ticking off their “bucket list” destinations or attending events that are otherwise impossible to reach by using a virtual reality headset.
The experience, a limited provision at the Ashiya Municipal Hospital as part of a health-care research project, has largely been seen as a positive experience by recipients.
Hospital officials are hoping the practice will help improve the patients’ quality of life in their final days.
A 40-year-old woman staying in the hospital was given an opportunity to watch a VR video recording of a concert that had been held late last year. The sound from the device’s headphone was in perfect sync with the movements of the performers, each playing a flute, a piano and percussion.
“The sense of reality goes to a different level when sound is added,” the woman said. “That allows me, even as I am staying in this hospital, to take pleasure in thinking about what I will be doing next.”
A VR system allows a user to feel as if he or she were really attending a scene, as its 3-D imagery rotates in accordance with the orientation of the user’s head.
The study involves fixing a goggle-type image display on the head of a patient, who is asked to use a remote control to choose, for example, where they want to go.
The device works with Google LLC’s video software app that allows the user to step into views and landscapes of choice anywhere around the world. It can also be operated with the imagery of a patient’s home or other fond places if image data taken with a special 360-degree camera is available.
The VR system is the brainchild of Kazuyuki Niki, an Osaka University assistant professor, who also works as a pharmacist for the Ashiya Municipal Hospital. He got the inspiration for using VR technology when he learned last year about a case where a sickroom space for a patient who could no longer go home was remodeled by using a curtain and bedclothes brought in from home.
Niki started the practice last autumn after obtaining the approval of the hospital’s ethics committee as a clinical study project.
The first to receive the VR experience was a woman who liked mountaineering. She enjoyed views from the peak of a mountain that she had wished to climb.
Others have come up with various requests. One “went to see” a park in their native Kyushu, to which they wanted to donate a cherry tree. Another “revisited” Kyoto, where they had been as a newlywed.
Yoshinobu Matsuda, director of the hospital’s Department of Palliative Care, said that most of the VR experience recipients were apparently content.
The goggle-type device, however, weighs about 500 grams, so it is a lot of work for a physically weakened patient to roll around the head under its weight. It should also be noted that patients in palliative care are prone to dizziness or feelings of nausea because of their diseases, drugs and other factors.
The woman who watched the concert video requested improvements.
“I find it painful to remain seated,” she said. “But if I lie on my back, the sky or the ceiling is about the only thing that comes into my view.”
Niki has started a separate, joint study at Gratia Hospital in Minoo, Osaka Prefecture, in February. The research project will hopefully address a total of 20 subjects, ask them questions before and after the VR experience and study changes in their physical and mental conditions.
“I hope the VR experience will help improve the patients’ quality of life, although its effectiveness has yet to be evaluated,” Niki said.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, Taxi dispatching just put the pedal to the metal, with NTT Docomo Inc. developing a system that utilizes artificial intelligence to find areas where people are milling about but cabs are in short supply.
Based on base-station data that connects cellphones, the system finds locations where people are gathered and analyzes the past boarding records of taxis in the area. It then estimates the needed number of cabs.
Tokyo Musen Kyodo Kumiai, a group of taxi companies in Tokyo, and Nagoya-based Tsubame Taxi Group began using the system on Feb. 15. They expect that taxis with “vacant” signs will converge more readily around areas where many customers are waiting, which will lead to an improvement in service.
According to NTT Docomo, a map displayed on a device installed at the driver’s seat is divided into 500-meter square grids. In each area, the number of taxis needed in the next 30 minutes is shown.
The data is updated every 10 minutes. Even en route to a destination, drivers can know which lanes have more demand.
They can also ascertain areas where the number of people suddenly increased other than train stations where people are constantly flocking about, such as when events are held or trains are delayed.
The AI system will gradually be installed in a total of 1,350 cabs at Tokyo Musen group and 1,150 at Tsubame Taxi.
At an experiment conducted for four months from December 2016, taxis equipped with the system earned about 1,400 yen ($US 13.10) more on average per day.

According to The Nikkei Asian Review, the Canon group and a cross section of other Japanese companies are teaming up to grow leafy greens in factories.
About 10 investors will provide funding to Vitec Vegetable Factory, a farming arm of electronics trader Vitec Holdings. Canon Electronics, a unit of the office equipment maker, and Ryonetsu Kogyou, an electronics supplier, will each provide about 10% of the money, or around 500 million yen ($4.69 million).
The Development Bank of Japan will contribute about 4% of the funding.
Vitec Vegetable Factory currently runs three plants in Japan. Under a new business plan that takes effect in April, it intends to have eight factories for lettuce, kale and other leafy vegetables running by the end of the fiscal year through March 2021.
Canon Electronics will provide automated systems for seeding, harvesting and shipping to Vitec's vegetable unit. This will be Canon's first time sharing its automation technology with an outside party. The company hopes to soak up more farming expertise that it can later use on its own.
One of the locations, in the central prefecture of Ishikawa, is expected to be capable of producing 4,400 tons of leafy vegetables a year, or 120,000 pieces a day. This would make it Japan's largest facility of its kind.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, an eco-friendly battery that can be munched by microbes has been developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT).
The idea is they will charge sensors that can be placed around volcanoes to note temperatures and vibrations, as well as in rivers to obtain data on water movement. Then when they die, the microbes have a feast.
It's branded as "the battery that will return to the earth" and is part of what is being called IoT ("Internet of things") technology in which a wide variety of objects are embedded with sensors.
The new technique has been developed to prepare for when Internet-equipped sensors cannot be recovered.
The triangular battery measures 2 centimeters along a side and boasts 1.1 volts, which would be enough for an LED lamp for 24 hours.
Eco-friendly sensors and communication chips to go with the battery are also being developed.
In the experiment, the newfangled batteries and regular ones were powdered and 1 gram of each was mixed into soil for two pots.
Seeds of Japanese mustard spinach were then sowed in the pot, and it was found that the eco-friendly batteries did not affect the growth whereas the vegetable did not grow in the pot with the regular battery mix.
A battery has an electrolysis solution between two electrical poles. In conventional batteries, electrical poles contain harmful rare metals, including lithium, and fluorine.
And the electrolysis solution is made of potassium hydroxide, a strong alkaline material that is not plant friendly.
NTT used biological materials that were carbonized for the poles and almost-electrically neutral liquid for the electrolysis solution.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese team has developed a skin-thin LED device that can be directly applied on the human body and coupled with a wearable sensor to display information about the wearer’s health.
The researchers expect applications to home-based medical care will allow doctors to remotely monitor patients’ conditions via the Internet, and send notifications to the display such as reminders to take medication.
They aim to put the technologies into practical use in three years or so.
A team of researchers from the University of Tokyo and the Research & Development Center of Dai Nippon Printing Co. (DNP) reported the development at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in the United States on Feb. 17.
Takao Someya, professor of engineering at the University of Tokyo, who led the research, said the advantages of the devices are that “a pulse and body temperature can be monitored without causing trouble to patients,” and “the information is easy to access.”
A sample device showcased by the team has about 400 LEDs evenly laid out on a 1-millimeter thick rubber sheet that can be stretched and twisted, enabling it to display letters, diagrams and moving images.
The team engineered the sheet so the stress of flexing is dispersed and the electric circuit within it would not break.
It passed a 10,000-stretch durability test, and can be applied to parts of the body that flex a lot, such as the back of a hand.
The research team also developed an improved wearable sensor that can monitor the heart when applied to the chest.
Cardiograph data can be transmitted wirelessly to online storage, fed to the display applied on the patient’s body, or remotely checked by doctors.
Hiroki Maeda, a member of the research team from the Research & Development Center of DNP, said, “(These technologies) can be applied in the realm of sports."

According to Nikkei Asian Review, Japanese companies are developing biofuels that can be burned alongside coal to cut carbon dioxide emissions at power plants without investment in pricey new equipment.
Oil distributor Idemitsu Kosan has developed a new type of pellet fuel made from compressed wood waste carbonized at a low temperature that can be burned in coal-fired plants. Plant-based biomass can be considered a carbon-neutral fuel, since burning it just releases the CO2 previously absorbed by the plants.
Though biomass is already used in some coal-fired power plants, it can generally make up only about 5% of the fuel burned, since wood fibers put extra stress on boilers. Idemitsu's new fuel alleviates this problem by reducing the amount of fiber, letting it comprise as much as 30% of the fuel mix.
The company plans to produce the pellets in Thailand, which has an abundance of wood waste, and start marketing them to Japanese power companies in fiscal 2018. Idemitsu aims to sell 20,000 tons of the fuel in the first year, worth hundreds of millions of yen. The pellets likely will initially cost three times as much as coal, though the price will drop once mass production begins. Overseas sales will be considered as well.
Nippon Steel & Sumikin Engineering, a subsidiary of Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal, has developed equipment that can process plant waste at Southeast Asian palm plantations into biofuel. It employs steel-rolling technology to squeeze impurities out of plant matter, creating a solid fuel that -- like Idemitsu's pellets -- can replace up to 30% of coal at a thermal power plant.
The engineering company plans to begin selling the equipment to major plantation operators in Indonesia and Malaysia in fiscal 2018, with an eye toward exporting the fuel produced to Japan. It expects to sell at least 2 billion yen (US$ 18.3 million) worth of the equipment next fiscal year.
The Paris Agreement on climate change has accelerated the shift from CO2-spewing fossil fuels to renewable energy. But fossil feuls will likely remain in demand for some time in emerging countries with large coal reserves. This will likely spur efforts to reduce CO2 emissions from existing fossil-fuel power plants in order to tackle climate change without stifling economic growth.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, soaring to new heights after failing a year ago, Japan’s space agency successfully launched one of the world’s smallest rockets here on Feb. 3.
It also marked the first time the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has successfully launched a rocket using commercially available electronic parts.
The rocket, SS-520 No. 5, 9.5 meters long and weighing 2.6 tons, was constructed at a relatively low cost.
The JAXA had failed to launch its predecessor, SS-520 No. 4, in January 2017.
According to JAXA, SS-520 No. 5 lifted off from the Uchinoura Space Center at 2:03 p.m., loaded with an ultra-small satellite weighing about 3 kilograms.
About seven and a half minutes into flight, the satellite, developed by the University of Tokyo, successfully separated from the rocket.
The rocket was based on ones that have been utilized for atmospheric observations and other purposes. JAXA used off-the-shelf parts for the electronic circuits and other components to demonstrate low-cost technologies for launching an ultra-small satellite.
The development and the launch of the SS-520 No. 5 cost about 500 million yen ($US 4.5 million).
The SS-520 No. 4 was JAXA’s first rocket that used commercially available parts. However, the launch in January 2017 failed as abnormalities occurred in electrical sources due to vibrations and other factors and, as a result, it became impossible for ground teams to receive signals from the rocket.
Because of the failure, JAXA took measures to protect the wiring to prevent vibrations from reaching the electrical circuits.
“As we succeeded in demonstrating the use of commercially available parts, we will be able to utilize this success in the next project,” said Hiroto Habu, a JAXA project manager.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, a construction company here in Japan has developed a wooden pillar product that it says can withstand fire for three hours without burning down, opening up the possibility of wooden high-rise buildings.
Shelter Co. has obtained approval from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism for the product, meaning it cleared standards that are required of buildings with 15 or more stories. The technology will allow large-scale facilities to be built entirely of wood, company officials said.
“Japan has a tradition of wooden buildings, such as Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, that are unparalleled in the world,” said Kazuyoshi Kimura, 68, Shelter president.
“We would also be able to pursue urban planning with wooden buildings even when it comes to modern architecture, where fire resistance and safety are required.”
Kimura explained at a news conference in Yamagata that the pillar product has a three-ply structure in which a rectangular wooden pillar bar is wrapped in plasterboards, which are in turn covered with another layer of wood from the outside.
The wooden surface and the wet plaster defended the interior pillar in an experiment where the product was burnt for three hours in a furnace at a temperature of about 1,000 degrees.
The rectangular wooden bar inside was found without any burn marks even after the product was left in the furnace for an additional nine hours, the officials said.
Shelter obtained a patent for the invention in 2009. Previously, the company made wood products that can withstand fire for one hour in 2013, and came up with two-hour fire-resistant wooden products in 2014. Those products are usable in pillars, walls and other building components.
The latest, three-hour fire-resistant product would allow high-rise structures to be built of wood under Japan’s Building Standards Law, Shelter officials said.
Shelter is planning to share the production method and other information about the new contraption with members of the Japan Fire-proof Wooden Building Construction Association.
The product can be made by combining raw materials on a construction site. Shelter said it would not collect patent fees, but instead obtain income in accordance with the quantity of pillars and other components used by others.
Hiroyuki Adachi, 51, Shelter managing director, said that business talks are under way regarding, among other things, an 11-story building in Tokyo and a nine-story university dormitory.
Use of the new wooden product is expected to allow construction periods to be shortened because it obviates the need for drying concrete and other processes, which makes it “more reasonable from the viewpoint of costs than the use of a steel frame and concrete,” Adachi said.

According to The Asahi Shimbun, an international team of scientists, including a Japanese Nobel laureate, said a new test on just a teaspoon of blood can detect a protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease with an accuracy rate of 90 percent.
The mass spectrometric technique identifies abnormal proteins called amyloid-beta flowing in blood.
A buildup of these proteins in the brain is believed to cause Alzheimer’s disease. The abnormal proteins can start accumulating 20 to 30 years before the onset of the disease.
“The study results will be a foundation for breakthroughs in various medical technologies, including development of fundamental therapeutic agents,” said Koichi Tanaka, co-winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and a senior fellow at Kyoto-based Shimadzu Corp.
In addition to the Koichi Tanaka Mass Spectrometry Research Laboratory at Shimadzu, the international team included researchers from the National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology (NCGG) in Obu, Aichi Prefecture.
Using blood samples of 0.5 cc, the researchers could detect and identify abnormal proteins in subjects’ brains and determine the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
To confirm the results, the team examined positron emission tomography images of the brains of 232 subjects, including healthy elderly people and those with Alzheimer’s disease, in Japan and Australia.
The scientists found that the method can easily detect accumulation of the protein believed to lead to Alzheimer’s disease. In addition, they said the test could be used as a diagnosis aide.
The blood test would be less expensive than the imaging test, which can cost more than 100,000 yen (US$ 920).
However, a number of hurdles remain.
The presence of the abnormal proteins does not always lead to Alzheimer’s disease, meaning that the test results could cause unnecessary anxiety among those who remain healthy.
Those who undergo the test could also be treated unfairly by insurance companies if the results are spread to a third party.
Furthermore, a method to remove the abnormal proteins from the body has yet to be established.
“Our blood test can help determine the efficacy of therapeutic agents for the time being,” said Katsuhiko Yanagisawa, director-general of the NCGG’s Research Institute. “To widely utilize the method in society, a social consensus is required.”

According to The Asahi Shimbun, three trucks move along the Shin-Tomei Expressway in an experiment conducted on Jan. 23 in which the lead driver controlled the speed and braking of the trio of vehicles.
Imagine if a single driver could be in charge of three trucks at the same time. No more chronic shortage of truck drivers in Japan, for sure.
An experiment Jan. 23 in Shizuoka Prefecture effectively pulled off the driving feat.
The driver behind the wheel of the lead truck in a three-vehicle convoy controlled the brakes and accelerators of all three vehicles from his seat in the experiment using wireless transmission.
The two trucks following the lead vehicle did have drivers controlling the steering, admittedly.
Toyota Tsusho Corp., a Nagoya-based trading company, was commissioned by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and other agencies to conduct the experiment that utilizes autonomous driving technology.
Trucks from different manufacturers were used and they traveled about 15 kilometers in total on a section of the Shin-Tomei Expressway.
The organizers of the experiment hope to commercialize the technology by 2020.